PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — Caribbean nations face “very, very scary” rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday.

In order to highlight the “very, very scary” danger California faces, I created some frightening visualizations of what California may look like once flooded with water from Arctic ice, which – as we are told by top government officials – is melting at a record pace. If you are squeamish, look no further – this is indeed scary stuff.
Here is what the Santa Ana UHI Station may look like after being flooded :

And most frightening is what might happen to Mt. Whitney after the next Biblical flood:

If these pictures don’t scare you into buying a hybrid (or even better an aquatic car) I don’t know what will.

Every month NSIDC comments on what has happened to Arctic sea ice the previous month. Usually there are asides which show support for the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming; why I have never discovered, but to me they detract from what are, otherwise, very good scientific reports. I will be reading the reoprt in early May, about what happened in April, with considerable interest.

I’ve recently realised that it’s not just the word “anomaly” that makes my eyes glaze over, graphs have the same effect. Still, they’re very pretty with all those lovely colours, enough to brighten even the dullest life.

I noticed yesterday that the 2009 sea ice extent was about to exceed that measured for 2003. Does this make the news? of course not. It seems everything appears to be correlating quite nicely with the behavior of the sun…you know…that thing that actually SUPPLIES all of the heat to the Earth, but this is not nearly as riveting as man-made global warming I suppose.

Hope some countries in the world will not follow this new creed you americans have created. Why is it so you manage for inventing kind of weird beliefs?
You are the ones now who are privileged for having within your frontiers the majority of green clerics, green saints and even the Green Pontiff himself.
You have originated the problem so, we people of the world, expect from you also the solution.

Note to commenters: We have had dozens of posts where global-warming deniers infest the comment threads. This time, the thread is open to those who accept science. Although we almost never try to prune threads of dissentors (it goes against our mission) I do plan to delete denier-trolls. There’s room here for reasonable people to disagree about what to do, but I’m not letting the threads get hijacked by trolls again–you’ve had your say, and we understand your position.

Most if not all of these folks, while avoiding all contradicting science are eager to accept every fabrication the AGWers imagine.
They had two threads buying Lubchenco’s fabricated ocean dead zone-AGW connection.

and can someone tell me what kind of credentials Mr. Chu has to back up his position as energy secretary?

Dr. Chu is a nuclear physicist. My understanding is that he is quite brilliant in his field.

Out of his field, he seems to be totally lost. His knowledge of climate science seems to be even worse than Holdren’s…Maybe even worse that Browner’s. Dr. Chu was also surprised to learn that the Energy Secretary plays a role in oil policy…

The day before, reporters asked him about OPEC output levels after a speech to a group of utility regulators. He responded that the issue was “not in my domain.”

The ice will continue its recovery for a while; the difference in the sea of Okhotsk will diminish steadily as both the current and old areas disappear.

Thus, in a couple of weeks, y’all should get really excited. But don’t pop the corks just yet.

All that first and second year ice melts pretty quick in July and August. We won’t know until September what the minimum for the year will be. We should get significant recovery in that most important statistic, but don’t expect it to be as spectacular as the current figures.

And don’t expect Dr. Meier to suddenly change his perspective every week as another 7 days of data pours in. He knows how much weight he carries and if he jumps ship, the SS AGW goes down like the Titanic. He sure as hell doesn’t want to jump back and forth. Expect him to act like the professional he is.

It is important to recognize that the long term average you’re quoting was measured with a different satellite and set of instruments. They haven’t been cross calibrated, and the AMSR-E is regarded as having both a higher accuracy and precision. But it isn’t the number that would be quoted – precisely because it doesn’t have the long-term history.

I’m pretty sure that are ole pal Al is already on a war path from hell to houston. He’s gonna force them to alter the graphs. So don’t be surprised that if just as it’s about to hit the average line it takes a mysterious deep dive.

The US monitoring centre in Florida reported late last year that there had been a downturn in the number of hurricanes.

What a strange world we live in.

This morning BBC txt service carried a story about a meeting of astronomers and their concern at the state of the sun and lack of heat.
I turned off txt and upped the volume expecting to see all the “little greenies” in bits as their world falls apart.

I am not sure why you people are fighting this, CO2 is destroying the planet, the great one, Obama has told you so. Obama is loved by everyone around the planet and they look to him for leadership. Coal Electric plants will be shut down or pay huge taxes. Cars will get 50 mph or you will be taxed. Get ready to pay, the great one has spoken. Oil, Coal and anything that releases CO2 is evil! Hum, mankind is evil? Yes, if you don’t follow the great one, Obama, your evil!

PS, there are those in the other party that feel the same.

Bottom line is power, you need a crisis to gain more power. Man made global warming is a part of the crisis equation.

There appears to be an inverse relationship between good science and hyperbole. The latter also seems to supplant reality when actual data does not support the premise or the agenda. With ice extents rising, snow fields accumulating solid water to feed glaciers, and temperatures trending lower, the esteemed scientist resorts to emphatic technical statements like, “very, very scary.”

Adam from Kansas (09:10:59) : “Well this is a real problem for the IPCC, something will have to be adjusted so people will believe they cause global warming, maybe they will send bombers to blow up the ice?”

That would be a lot of work. They’d have to drill a long series of holes across the ice in more or less a straight line, right where it’s thinnest, and then…uh, oh.

I have a bad feeling about this, it could be very embarrassing – again! There was a time, long, long ago, when we Brits were very good at this kind of thing & carried out very valuable science into the bargin, alas no more!

You chaps are closest, could you have a fleet of helicopters & planes & emergency rescue teams on permanent standby? Send the bill to Catlin II et al.

How is it going down under at the other pole, is the ice melting particularly early or faster than usual – real data, not what te media report?

This is certainly all nice “so far”, but looking at previous years it’s really around the middle of June where the men start to get separated from the boys as to what the eventual yearly minimum will be, as the lines for 2005 and 2008 would suggest. Beating 2005 with a higher minimum, if not worthy of a champagne party, would at least be just cause for a beer bash.

Actually there is a problem with Archimedes principle, namely that ice is fresh water and the sea is salt water. A study by Peter D. Noerdlinger and Kay R. Brower, in The Geophysical Journal International, 170, pp. 145-150, 2007 “The melting of floating ice raises the ocean leve”l says it does but I think there is an error. I could be wrong but here is what I think actually happens. I am not addressing grounded ice. I used 2000 numbers Arctic sea ice and got a sea ice volume of 42,500km3. I then took the total volume of sea water globally, 1,320,000,000km3. Now to be fair I used the numbers from the study. I then did the following calculations:

42500km3 Total volume of arctic sea ice
1320000000km3 Total volume of sea water

1320008178km3 Increase in Sea water volume
0.00062% Volume increase expressed as a percentage
361000000km2 Surface area of the Sea
3.656509695km Average depth
0.02265m Increase in average depth or 2.27cm

However, when we figure in the mixing of fresh water to saltwater into a homogeneous mixture, the specific gravity goes from 1.026 to 1.025999089 which is not much.

1320001172km3 expansion due to lower specific gravity
38067.72km3 volume of the ice at the new specific gravity

As you can see, the new volume of the melted ice once mixed is only 0.0338km3 greater than the displacement.

The increase in sea level is 0.00325m or 3.25mm.

What it means is that there is an initial rise until the mixing is complete and then the difference in sea level height is 3.25mm. So while all the sea ice in the Arctic could melt, the change will be slight.

At this point I think we need a new term for the AGW people: Global Cooling Deniers. They are not in line with the latest data, the data they are relying on is bad, their hypotheses are running afoul of actual trends, and they seem to keep changing the goal posts to keep their increasingly feable argument alive. That is, they are not following the scientific method.

Second, if global cooling predictions are right, and if this cooling period bears any connection to previous minima, or worse!, then we are going to need more energy sources (for heating particularly) than we did before. It is therefore imperative that we not cripple readily available energy source, such as the US coal industry at this crucial hour. If this cooling trend is really a part of a major cold spell, then we are looking at at least 11 years of colder weather patterns. But if the Dalton minimum is any indication, this period could extend to at least 2 solar cycles or 20 years, or more.

Hurricanes, cyclonic storms, are not intensifying. The measure of this is done via ACE, or… Accumulated cyclone energy analysis. True for the Atlantic area 2005 tops the list at an ACE level of 248, the next year below it was 1950 at 243. However, the year following 2005; 2006 was a very low 79 and then 2007 was even lower at an ACE level of 72.

2008 tied with 1966 (a very cool year) at 145. 1998 (everyone remembers how warm 98 was) had an ACE of 182, but, 1961 (another cool year) had an ACE of 205. A similar comparison can be made with cyclonic storms in the Pacific. Hence, there is NO correlation between Global average temperatures and the intensity of hurricanes / cyclonic storms.

2. Sea levels:

During the last glacial period you could have walked on dry land crossing the Chesapeake Bay, San Fransisco Bay and Galveston Bay would have been dry, and along the coasts it would have been possible to walk out to or almost to the continental shelves. The warming from the glacial period into the interglacial (our Holocene) melted massive amounts of ice and sea levels rose. Likewise, sea levels dropped during the Little Ice Age. As temperatures warmed to a more pleasant and healthy level during the last century the sea levels once again rose slightly.

This century the sea level has been rising on an average of about 3MM +/- .4mm per year.

It appears that Obama is now hiring aliens….. extra-terrestrial aliens. Clearly…. Obama’s man Chu is not from Earth or speaking of Earth. He must be projecting events for some distant planet. Perhaps that of his origin.

Malcolm: For some reason that Greenland magnetic pole expedition finds it necessary to take food from poor people. That’s rather impolite, why didn’t the newspaper report poor people’s opinions about that act?

Lordy, Lordy, a physiotherapist, landscape gardner and a skipper and the Danish government is going to use their scientific evidence? Their report will probably suggest that polar bears need a back rub because of all the extra swimming.

Re: Nobel Lauriate Chu … Alfred would roll over in his grave if he knew the recent line-up of winners – Nobel was an industrialist whose work made it cheaper to produce lots of coal! Who has taken over the Nobel Committee? – I thought it had sunk the lowest when they handed out prizes to Koffi Anan for presiding over the Rwanda genocide and before that to Arafat, Peres and Rabin for Middle east peace.

But… this is only first year ice. First year ice doesn’t really exist – it is just your imagination trying to convince you that AGW doesn’t exist Winston. Remember, 2+2 = 5 b/c Big Brother Al says it does.

While sea ice and other obsevations are not cooperating with AGW the brainwashing of the masses continues.

Yesterday Thom Hartman told his radio audience that if we don’t act fast on global warming earth will become uninhabitable for humans and all other living creatures.

Today, I just heard Thom instruct his audience that the Medieval Warm Period was a “local warming, limited to northern Europe and Greenland, caused by ocean currents in the Atlantic similar to an El Nino”.

Not so funny is Hartman is one of the icons of the left viewed as smarter than most.

An article in today’s Telegraph (UK)04.21.09. alludes to a new book by Lord Stern, the former World Bank chief ‘ECONOMIST’.

“The greenhouse effect is simple and sound science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting more greenhouse gases. There will be oscillations, there will be uncertainties. But the logic of the greenhouse effect is rock solid and the long-term trends associated with the effects of human emissions are clear in the data,” he writes.

QED??

“The arguments from those who deny the science look more and more like those who denied the association between HIV and Aids or smoking and cancer.”

What is he on about??

He also says (to paraphrase) – ” that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already at 430ppm and temps are likely to rise by 2 degrees C by the end of the Century, causing a rise in sea level. If nothing is done temps may rise by 6 degrees C and Florida and Bangladesh could disappear, and alligators survive at the north pole!!!”

Maybe warm water sharks as well!!

As methodical and empirical scientific data like the above figures -(Steven Goddard) suggests anything but global warming indeed cooling, the voices of the AGW believers grows ever more maniacally desperate.
I sense that the tide of opinion is beginning to change, – the argument is swinging the way of science and pragmatism.

geo (10:16:30) : This is certainly all nice “so far”, but looking at previous years it’s really around the middle of June where the men start to get separated from the boys as to what the eventual yearly minimum will be, as the lines for 2005 and 2008 would suggest. Beating 2005 with a higher minimum, if not worthy of a champagne party, would at least be just cause for a beer bash.

Um, June figures ought to be known by the first weekend in July… just in time for the WUWT BBQ Party … I’m up for a beer bash (along with the burnt cow steak, the high fat macaroni salad, the baked potato covered in Real Butter and Sour Cream, the corn on the cob with more Real Butter, and some BBQ Ribs done Real Slow with smokey chips and Phils Phire Sauce …)

And remember to locate one thermometer in the grill and one just down wind… in compliance with the care shown for real surface stations…

What it means is that there is an initial rise until the mixing is complete and then the difference in sea level height is 3.25mm. So while all the sea ice in the Arctic could melt, the change will be slight.

Thanks for the reply. I’ll buy high heel sandals next time I go to the beach.

That bit about alligators at the north pole is really quite interesting. If we ignore the fact that alligators aren’t marine animals, it is true that they are (together with the chinese alligator) the most cold-tolerant crocodylian species. The northern limit of their range in the US suggest that an annual average of approximately 17 C (63 F) is about their limit. There is no weather station at the North pole for obvious reason, so I’ll take the closest one, Alert on Ellesmere land. Annual average there is -18 C (-2 F), so for alligators to survive there would require a warming of abut 35 C (65 F).
Methinks Dr Stern is a wee bit overwrought.

Benjamin P.,
Your assertion is a piece of Orwellian history. Last year at this time were the infamous (and laughably wrong) assertions by the AGW promotion industry that 2008 could very likely see an ice free Arctic.http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080620-north-pole.html
Your take on this is just on example of why AGW is more properly studied as social science than climate.

“It must be frustrating that the planet isn’t heating up like you want it to.”

That’s what I want? How’d you deduce that?

I am more about some solid science over anything, and that is a position I have maintained since I started posting here.

So I am curious, is it the wind every year? or just the years when there is more than “normal” (whatever normal is).

As for short term trends, if the ice was shrinking or growing, short term trends say little about climate on the whole. And my 2007 example was to show that short term trends are pretty silly to throw much stock behind.

Take a breath smokey, I am not trying to attack your position, just sharing my thoughts on short term trends and climate.

Given the spate of grim news on the political front of the AGW debate, I think it might be time for a bit of a diversion to introduce a little lightheartedness to the mood of your readers. I suggest a pool for the best prediction of the summer low of the AMSR-E sea ice extent. I’ve got dibs on 5.857142 mil. km2, a number I arrived at by strict adherence to all the rules of technique and methodology of the warmists playbook for climate estimation, i.e. I smoothly extracted a number from my anal orifice and then applied unjustified precision to make it look more “scientific”.
It would probably enhance the entertainment value if everyone kicked in a couple of bucks with their entries, but given the increasing number of times your name has appeared in pieces about opposition to the administration’s policies, there’s probably already an army of political operatives and liberal bureaucrats out there trying to do a Joe the Plumber rectal polyp count on you and you wouldn’t want to hand them the opportunity to nail you for running an illegal lottery.

A comparison of the various Arctic ice sites seem to show that Cryosphere Today is starting to head south again and is an apparent outlier. See the various charts, Cryosphere Today vs
IJIS JAXA and NSIDC.

I wonder what there excuse is this time.

For those checking the actgual ice areas, here is the comapartive data for April 20th in km²:

A little O/T, but speaking of impressive gains, see how WUWT stacks up against Real Climate (which is breaking into the top 100,000 web sites less and less frequently) and Al Gore’s Climate Crisis (which looks to be almost non-existent). Here’s the new look from Alexa:

“Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet
New York Times ^ | April 20, 2009 | John Tierney

When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama’s science adviser.

Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology — the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.

But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:

1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because…

2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.”
Read more at nytimes.com …”

I thought I had read earlier that winds were responsible for piling up some of that first year ice and that kept it from reaching even higher extents during the winter. If true that may mean the first year ice is thicker than standard first year ice and will last longer than many expect.

If all this is true, it will be somewhat ironic that wind (not heat) will be responsible for the recovery just like it was responsible for the huge drop in 2007.

Actually there is a problem with Archimedes principle, namely that ice is fresh water and the sea is salt water. A study by Peter D. Noerdlinger and Kay R. Brower, in The Geophysical Journal International, 170, pp. 145-150, 2007 “The melting of floating ice raises the ocean leve”l says it does but I think there is an error. I could be wrong but here is what I think actually happens. I am not addressing grounded ice. I used 2000 numbers Arctic sea ice and got a sea ice volume of 42,500km3. I then took the total volume of sea water globally, 1,320,000,000km3. Now to be fair I used the numbers from the study. I then did the following calculations:

42500km3 Total volume of arctic sea ice
1320000000km3 Total volume of sea water

1.026 Specific Gravity Sea water
0.919 Specific Gravity Sea Ice

The increase in sea level is 0.00325m or 3.25mm.

What it means is that there is an initial rise until the mixing is complete and then the difference in sea level height is 3.25mm. So while all the sea ice in the Arctic could melt, the change will be slight. “””

Actually; nothing of the sort happens; when the floating sea ice melts, the water level goes down; not up.

It takes 80 calories per gram to melt the ice, and the only place all that energy is going to come is from the sea that the ice is floating on; remember that 9/10 or 10/11 or thereabouts of the total volume is underwater, so there is a whole lot of ice surface area in contact with the water, and only a small part in contact with the air, and water has much betetr thermal conductivity than air.

And since the sea water is salty to about 3.5% salinity; it always has a positive temperature coefficient of expansion so the water contracts, and the level goes down; and it goes down pretty much a fixed amount independent of how much the water cools. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to prove that statement. Only assumption you have to make is that the temperature coefficient of expansion is independent of temperature over the possible range. It probably isn’t; but then that is only a second order effect. Good luck !

re Thomas J Arnold (11.17.32)
In the same article, the Telegraph (not for the first time) writes about a ” 6C (43F)” global temperature increase.
A temperature of 6C does approximate to 43F. However a temperature change of 6C equates to a change of 10.8F.
Is it ignorance or deliberate alarmism that prompts such rubbish in the press.

So, polar bears are heading south, and crocodiles are heading north. I have three questions.
(1) When will they meet?
(2) At what latitude will this happen?
(3) Given that the bear, thanks to its sharp and powerful talons, can mercilessly Gore an adversary while the crocodile, blessed with bone-crushing jaws, is rightly feared for its mighty Chew and assuming I have a few carbon-credits to spare (Yup-I’m a hopeless optimist) – on whom should I place my bet?

Specifically he succeeded in laser trapping single atoms (in 1985). None of his other team members was recognised; nor was Arthur Ashkin, who invented laser trapping in 1970, and who taught Steven Chu how to make laser traps.

It is now a standard manipulation technique for biologicval samples; they call them laser tweezers; and it was Ashkin and not Chu who invented the technology (at Bell Labs Holmdel NJ); after the labs cut off funding for his research. (he did it on his own anyway).

So Chu was not in any hurry to credit his associates in the field for what they taught him, and none of them were recognised.

I have in my career encountered numerous engineers or scientists, who were only to eager to take credit for the work of others; and for some it seems a cultural habit.

I know of one patent that was issued to someone who asked me to sign on as a co-inventor; which I declined to do; since all the details of that invention are in my lab notebook from perhaps ten years before I described it to this “inventor”. If it’s that important to him; let him bask in his glory; I have plenty; including a patent on “thin air”. He does have a lot more than I do, but then that is how he measured his career. For me they are just business tools that companies use to stop encroachment by competitors. (it doesn’t stop people from some cultures anyway.)

Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, on the dangers of global warming–
“We estimate that there are perhaps 20,000 prehistoric hunter-gatherers frozen up in those glaciers. Now, if they simply thaw and wander around, it’s not a problem, but if they find a leader — a Captain Caveman, if you will — we’ll be facing an even more serious problem.”

“Barbra Streisand told Diane Sawyer that we’re in a global warming crisis, and we can expect more and more intense storms, droughts and dust bowls. But before they act, weather experts say they’re still waiting to hear from Celine Dion.” –Jay Leno

“Al Gore said over the weekend that global warming is more serious than terrorism. Unless the terrorist is on your plane, then that extra half a degree doesn’t bother you so much.” –Jay Leno

“Phil (14:13:41) :
How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”

Ohhhh, those poor poor ice caps. Are they crying? Do they hear the ticking of the clock and realize that their days are numbered? And how can we ruin this celestial paradise with an SUV? Wouldn’t we need an airplane or a spaceship to ruin a celestial paradise? Wouldn’t an SUV be closer to a “terrestrial” paradise? And, by the way I thought that CO2 was a beneficial gas for the plants that reside in terrestrial paradises, or is it paradumb? Oh well please post the address of the celestial paradise you speak of, I think I better use up my skymiles before cap and trade gets started in ernest. By the way, Phil, what is the climate like on your planet?
Mike

So, polar bears are heading south, and crocodiles are heading north. I have three questions.
(1) When will they meet?
(2) At what latitude will this happen?
(3) Given that the bear, thanks to its sharp and powerful talons, can mercilessly Gore an adversary while the crocodile, blessed with bone-crushing jaws, is rightly feared for its mighty Chew and assuming I have a few carbon-credits to spare (Yup-I’m a hopeless optimist) – on whom should I place my bet?

The will probably interbreed producing a Man-Bear-Croc that will then terrorise the new warmer earth.

In the second image on this thread, the 2009 trend line looks like it’s been right-shifted. I.e., all the readings seem to correspond to dates one month earlier in the year. Consequently, the line bumped or nearly bumped against the 2007 (shrinking ice) trend line on the way up and at the peak.

If this one-month offset continues, the effect will be for the 2009 trend line to bump against the 1979-2000 average on the way down. I.e., during the retreating phase of the ice. If so, there will be warming of the WUWT-cockles.

“How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”

Paradise? Ask the millions of grieving parents whose childrens lives were sacrificed on the verdant altar of an hubristic DDT denialism that put the theoretical thickness of avian egg-shells above the reality of febrile infant mortality!

Paradise? Have a thought Phil for the 95% of Chad citizens whose survival depends on access to an energy source that they once relied upon- Charcoal!
Yes it killed the germs – cooked the meal- kept them alive. The elite of that country – went green – and banned its usage. Does that make you feel good mate? No it doesn’t – Just think!

CO2 emissions? Someone is scamming you- please don’t take that badly – I mean no disrespect. Man is currently responsible for circa 5% of CO2 emissions, since pre-Industrial times we’ve moved from about 3% of total carbon dioxide to where we now sit. Face it, Phil, we are bit players as far as the planet is concerned.

Finally, we come to the impoverishment of the ice-caps. Is that via the mechanism of evaporation as purported by recent statements of a US politician or just numerical dissonance?
Are you utilising the mannian-made logic that sneers at historic evidence as proven legendary because they fly in the face of peer-reviewed studies of pine-cone proxies.
Sea-ice is just dandy- the bottom bit of the globe is doing very well- if increasing extents are indeed meant to be good. Northern areas do seem to be spreading icy fingers back into regions that were recently given up as weedy-warmers!
Personally, I’d be much happier if the poles were ice-free once again- but that’s just me Phil

Phil (14:13:41) :
“How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”

Thank you once again, Phil, for another one of your astute, insightful, and well documented responses. I was somewhat skeptical before, but now since I’ve read your comment, I can’t understand how I could have been so foolish. Thanks for the liberation!

Hey, let the water rise. More water = more fish for me to catch. I think it would be just dandy to struggle over whether or not to walk out my back yard and fish in a stream, or walk out my front yard and fish in the ocean. Besides, I really, really, really, don’t like ice fishing. My butt is cold enough.

Thank you once again, Phil, for another one of your astute, insightful, and well documented responses. I was somewhat skeptical before, but now since I’ve read your comment, I can’t understand how I could have been so foolish. Thanks for the liberation!

In reply to Taylor, Noastronomer and others who raised this in the past, the uptick which occurs every 1 and 2 June is likely a calibration adjustment.
Calibration is an important issue with all satellite measurements. Looking at the AMSRE pages, it seems there are calibration issues with the “hot load temperatures” and also “along scan adjustments” need to be made.

Further re-adjustment due to instrument drift is quite likely the reason for the uptick. It seems JAXA only makes the adjustment once a year on the approximate anniversary of the beginning of the AMSRE data.

What is surprising is that JAXA don’t correct past data available on their web site by making the assumption the drift was linear. But then many on this forum complain about massaged data, so we can be glad that the values are left in the “raw” state even if it does show the strange uptick every 1 or 2 June.

Geo, Frederick Micheal and Benjamin P are right to warn of some caution about the current 7 year “record”. Today’s ice extent is not a good predictor to minimum ice extent for the year. 2008 showed that. According to the JAXA graphs from 2002-2008 the ice extent tends to converge from May to July. Looking at Cryosphere Today (which shows ice area – not ice extent) the following have a zero mean ice area for the period 1979-2000: Bering Sea, St Lawrence, Baffin/New Foundland Bay, Barents Sea, Hudson Bay and Sea of Okhotsk. That mean they always go to zero ice area every summer. Maybe some sooner and some later, but zero nevertheless.

In 2008 also the Kara Sea, Chuckchi Sea, Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea reached a zero ice area in summer. The main one is the East Siberian Sea which normally has mean ice area of 400k sq km ice area and in 2008 started to lose ice rapidly from July onwards and eventually contributed to a 400k negative anomaly in ice area and presumably a much larger negative ice extent anomaly.

For ice watchers, the Beaufort Sea might be the first clue. In 2008 it started to lose ice from about now onwards and reach zero ice area by August. Its mean minimum area is about 200K sq km.

The DMIgraph at the top shows 2009 ice tracking 2008, but a little lower and later. If that pattern continues to hold we could expect a drop in ice extent sometime soon. Looks like a hangover from lower amounts of multi year ice plus a late spring. I think the two factors will more or less cancel each other out and ice minimum in september will be around the same as last year.

In any case it is quite easy to note (looking at the cryosphere today ice concentrations maps) that much of the ice is very close to melting. In my opinion, we will see a rapid decrease within the next two weeks.

Your mathematical approach to calculating ice coverage is way too scientifically precise. I am applying the Phil or Phil. McCavity (whatever!!) technique of factorial mismanagement on my fantasy abacus which gives a magnificent total of 6.8903215 square kilometres at nadir.

Roll up, roll up!! Watch the red line stay to the right of the blue line in a thrilling race on the big dipper. It will be this summer’s greatest spectacle.

See my earlier post (2020) on this. It is not a computer glitch but likely just simply a correction for instrument drift. JAXA obviously does this correction only once per year on June 1 and/or June 2 being the anniversary of the start of the ASMR-E data.

You quote DMI, but that seems to be a different satellite system. Plus it is measuring extent as being pixels with greater than 30% ice concentration, so it is not directly comparable to JAXA which seems to use 15%.

“Total ice extent is computed by summing the number of pixels with at least 15 percent ice concentration multiplied by the area per pixel, thus the entire area of any pixel with at least 15 percent ice concentration is considered to contribute to the total ice extent”

“Total ice-covered area is defined as the area of each pixel with at least 15 percent ice concentration multiplied by the ice fraction in the pixel (0.15 to 1.00)”
(from NSIDC)

Too often extent and area are confused. Area will always be lower than extent.

An encouraging story link in today’s UK Daily Telegraph, Antarctic ice cover increasing quickly degenerates into the usual AGW voodoo.
As usual, the story is full of assertions with precisely no evidence, discussion or challenge.

Am I right in thinking that the whole “CFC / ozone hole” thing was debunked anyway?

Tetris Said:
“Data on the Norwegian Arctic Roos/Nansen site show the same development.”

Interesting that AROOS uses a 79-07 average (I assume NSIDC figures 01-07 don’t count). Also interesting there that Ice Area is closer to the 79-07 average.

I predict that when this whole Arctic Ice melting story “goes south”, we’re going to see the ol’ switcheroo and NSIDC will start showing graphs of ice volume (which nobody can really verify), so they can continue to make up stories of impending doom. That’s how this Catlin nonsense fits in. Their data will act as an “adjustment” calibration and voila! Volume is tragically decreasing – ignore what the satellites see! There’s no old man behind the curtain there! Boom! Crash!

In 2008 also the Kara Sea, Chuckchi Sea, Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea reached a zero ice area in summer. The main one is the East Siberian Sea which normally has mean ice area of 400k sq km ice area and in 2008 started to lose ice rapidly from July onwards and eventually contributed to a 400k negative anomaly in ice area and presumably a much larger negative ice extent anomaly.

Mechanism, schmechanism!

If I am not mistaken, warm waters flowing through the Bering straight from the Pacific would have an impact on those seas.

Regarding comments by Benjamin P. and Flanagan that seem to suggest the arctic ice is on the verge of repeating previous years’ rapid late-spring slump, the difference, I think, may come in the nature of the North American and Euro-Asian snowpack this year versus previous years. Comparisons between this years’ snowpack and that of two years ago reveals that Europe and the American east coast regions received significantly more snowfall this year than back then. With this additional snow, the impact of the increasing solar irradiance (following the equinox) will be blunted in the circumpolar region for some time until the snowpack is melted off. As such, winds blowing over the continents will reduce the air temperatures to at or below freezing in the arctic regions for some time, retarding icepack melt. This will mean the current 500,000 square kilometer buffer between this year’s ice extent and that of the minimum of 2007 is likely to continue or expand.

I asked about this last year and was told (by who I don’t recall) that it was an algorithm adjustment to compensate for lower than actual ice readings due to the presence of “melt ponds” on the ice that appear around this time

“Flanagan (00:30:26) :
In any case it is quite easy to note (looking at the cryosphere today ice concentrations maps) that much of the ice is very close to melting. In my opinion, we will see a rapid decrease within the next two weeks.”

I also looked at those maps, and I even used my magnifying glass. I carefully examined each and every pixel and for the life of me could not see even one pixel of ice that had even a hint of meltwater on it. Of course, I could be wrong, please tell me again how to tell if a pixel of ice is “about” to melt.

Yesirree, it may well be a spectacle. Last year’s race for survival of the Baby Ice was closely watched at climateaudit.org with some late season dramatics as the 2008 curve started diving toward the 2007 one. It pulled out just in the nick of time, and the sophists started talking up sea ice area instead of sea ice extent. Now they’ve switched to ice volume, which is a phony ploy, too, because volume after an extensive melt will lag by a year. If sea ice extent melt is not extensive as last year or the year before then volume will inevitably start rising.

To me, this emphasis on volume is just symptomatic of the desperation of the alarmists. They’ve got nothing else to hang their fearful hats upon.
==============================================

Flanagan, remember when I posted that at times I wasn’t sure if you were just pulling our chain or that at times you were truly attempting to understand, and help us understand, the CO2 greenhouse effect. When you post that by looking at Cryosphere Today, you can tell that the ice is about to rapidly melt in the next two weeks, I am inclined to believe that you are just pulling our chain.

Have you not, like I suggested you should do, been studying the jet stream maps and Arctic weather predictions? The only way rapid melt can happen in the next two weeks, in such cold temperatures, is for a very strong, steady wind (I am talking gale force or greater) and swift ocean current to send the ice on a sailing venture South.

Your comment about what the colors are telling you at Cryosphere is just plain silly and clearly stands out as an uneducated remark on this blog. Was it just a slip of the pinky on the keyboard? Were you on your third beer? If it was any of these, I’ve been there. We’ve all had our moments. If it was otherwise, please don’t do it again.

Len van Burgel (20:20:35) :
In reply to Taylor, Noastronomer and others who raised this in the past, the uptick which occurs every 1 and 2 June is likely a calibration adjustment.
Calibration is an important issue with all satellite measurements. Looking at the AMSRE pages, it seems there are calibration issues with the “hot load temperatures” and also “along scan adjustments” need to be made.

Further re-adjustment due to instrument drift is quite likely the reason for the uptick. It seems JAXA only makes the adjustment once a year on the approximate anniversary of the beginning of the AMSRE data.

What is surprising is that JAXA don’t correct past data available on their web site by making the assumption the drift was linear. But then many on this forum complain about massaged data, so we can be glad that the values are left in the “raw” state even if it does show the strange uptick every 1 or 2 June.

Expect the same to happen this year on 1 and/or 2 June

Actually the adjustment is made to the algorithm to better process the signal from ice with melt ponds. The switch is made on June 1st and back on October 15th.

You are right and I was on the wrong track.
I thought in the meantime the best was to ask JAXA. I got an immediate reply;

Here it is:

Dear van Burgel,

Thank you for inquiring about our AMSR-E sea-ice monitor web.

You are right.

Current version of data processing makes an erroneous bias of
sea ice extent on June 1st and October 15th which are seen
in the graph of sea ice extent as a small peak on these dates.
The apparent bias arises due to a switching of some parameters
in the processing on both dates. The parameter switching is
needed because the surface of the Arctic sea-ice becomes
wet in summer due to the melting of ice which changes
satellite-observed signatures of sea-ice drastically.

We are planning to improve the processing to make the gap
much smoother in the coming year.

I know of one patent that was issued to someone who asked me to sign on as a co-inventor; which I declined to do; since all the details of that invention are in my lab notebook from perhaps ten years before I described it to this “inventor”. If it’s that important to him; let him bask in his glory; I have plenty; including a patent on “thin air”. He does have a lot more than I do, but then that is how he measured his career. For me they are just business tools that companies use to stop encroachment by competitors. (it doesn’t stop people from some cultures anyway.)

Patents are useless if you do not have a large budget to defend them. Even then, if the product or process is valuable enough, it will still be used without compensation.

I am associated with a company possessing a valuable patent. A larger company began using our process without royalty payments. They were confronted in court and this confrontation cost us over $100,000. The company continues to use our process without paying royalties.

Now I am with another company. We too have a valuable technology. We will not patent it. We will simply maintain physical control of the technology, providing a service, not an instrument. I don’t know if it will protect us in the long run. But I already know what won’t.

Dr. Chu is simply a product of his generation. Take what you can if you can get away with it. The AGW debate is based on the same ethical failures.

I know of one patent that was issued to someone who asked me to sign on as a co-inventor; which I declined to do; since all the details of that invention are in my lab notebook from perhaps ten years before I described it to this “inventor”. If it’s that important to him; let him bask in his glory; I have plenty; including a patent on “thin air”. He does have a lot more than I do, but then that is how he measured his career. For me they are just business tools that companies use to stop encroachment by competitors. (it doesn’t stop people from some cultures anyway.)

Patents are useless if you do not have a large budget to defend them. Even then, if the product or process is valuable enough, it will still be used without compensation. “””

How true Jack. Most often these days, the big companies gather up these patent portfolios, and use them to keep the little guys out of their playpen. The big guys simply trade patent rights among themsleves, and then all gang up on th elittle guy.
It is probably impossible these days to build an integrated circuit, without infringing a thousand patents held by fifty different companies. Those companies simply swap their portfoliios; but the little guy just startign his company with a new product idea has to pay royalties to all fifty of them and their thousand patents.

My “thin air” patent is actually a patent on a lens made of air. Everywhere that is not the lens, is optical plastic or glass. And actually it works and has actually been built. Moreover a Korean outfit, tried to get us to pay for an optical system they say they designed, which is infringing on my air lens patent; so no we didn’t pay them any money.